Archives for February 2015

As an artist, 96% of our career is spent dealing with rejection. Rejection from friends, family, other artists and even the art world itself. Making a living from art can be a very long and lonely, misunderstood journey, especially in the beginning, and having a decent support system can help make that early journey a little more bearable.

But just as we’re often learning the ropes of how to be an artist, we also know that you’re learning the ropes of how to best support us. We need you, and here are the best ways you can help us out.

The birth of internet slang is fascinating stuff, I’m sure most of you will recall the hoopla that flooded the web when the word “selfie” became official when it was named as word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries. Soon after that, Merriam-Webster decided to induct it into it’s dictionaries, too. It had a lot of people wondering, “Who makes these words up?”

Though most of us wouldn’t give the thought too much of our time, the dedicated folks over at Hopes & Fears took that simple question and went one step further. They wanted to know how new words, such as the ever increasing dialect of internet slang, are incorporated into sign language. To find out how new slang words entered into American Sign Language (ASL), Hopes & Fears got in touch with Bill Vicars, a Deaf/Hard of Hearing (HH) man who runs Lifeprint–an educational website devoted to helping people learn ASL.[Read More…]

Light painters have many cool tools and techniques at their disposal allowing them to create various shapes, lines and colors. One of my favorite shapes is the light orb, so needles to say I was happy to see so many of them in one photo.

The East Coast Light Painting group set a Guinness World Record after they had successfully created 200 complete light orbs in a single exposure.

Light painting seems like an advanced form of magic if you don’t know how it’s created, so to anyone unfamiliar with light paining this photo will probably look like an alien nesting area.

If you have ever tried light painting though, you will appreciate the crazy amount of effort ad precision required to pull off such a feat.

I’ve been quietly rooting for Lytro since they introduced their field camera, but the young, innovative camera company has never really been able to raise the kind of interest and momentum needed to make a name for itself as one of the leading camera manufacturers. But, that doesn’t mean the company is ready to give up just yet. Early this week, Lytro made an announcement to their staff that the company has recently secured $50M in new funding to further develop the brand.[Read More…]

Honestly, I cannot believe this went under the radar for me. Photographer Dani Diamond just broke our ring light record, not by making it any bigger, but by adding a clever inner ring making it the first double-ringed DIY light I’ve seen.

The outer diameter is 4 feet and it features 12 bulbs in the inside ring and another 15 (actually 14) bulbs on the outside, making it a 27 bulbs monster. The only bulb that is missing, making it a 26-bulber is the topmost bulb that Dani uses as a clever mounting point, booming it rather that mounting it on a light stand.

Perfect Effects 9 Premium Edition includes hundreds of fully customizable presets and filters. There’s a version for Windows or for Mac OS X and it can be used as a plug-in with Photoshop, Lightroom, Photoshop Elements, Apple Aperture or as a standalone app.

The software is now available for free as a special offer for 500px members, but anyone can download it. All you need to do is fill in your email, name and country and a download link and license number will be sent to you within minutes.

Just two weeks after World Press Photo’s announcement that 22% of entries that had reached the penultimate round were disqualified due to excessive post processing, a Belgian politician claims a winning photoset should be disqualified due to its “serious distortion of reality”.

The mayor of Charleroi, where the winning photos of the “Contemporary Issues Stories” category were taken, justified his request to have the award withdrawn saying that the photos hurt not only the people of Charleroi but also the profession of photojournalism.

World Press Photo is currently verifying the facts behind the photos of Italian winner, Giovanni Troilo.

The idea behind Preservation, was somewhat of an after thought. It occurred to Blake Little while shooting a male eating honey. That original concept was meant to bring the bear like qualities of the man to attention through the incorporation of honey. As he was shooting the man eating honey, Little noted the stereotypical idea was one of the more cliche photos he had created. As he sorted through the images from that shoot, he singled out the man’s hand, which was completely covered in honey–the amber colored liquid slowly rolled down his hand before dripping off his fingertips in a very captivating way.[Read More…]

Clinton Lofthouse is a Photographer, Retoucher and Digital Artist based in the United Kingdom, who specialises in creative retouching and composites. Proud 80's baby, reader of graphic novels and movie geek!
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